


Hows For Whys

by hitlikehammers



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 'The Lying Detective' Spoilers, (This is About Not-Texts Mostly), Alternate Ending, Episode Tag, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fixed That Awkward Attempt at a No-Homo Moment For You, M/M, Missing Scene, Realization, Series Four Spoilers, Texts are Just Texts After All
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9262850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: John’s had plenty of opportunities, hell: he’s had opportunities today, just now. He maybe even thought he was taking advantage of one of those opportunities. But John's learned enough from this chair, in this home that he can’t escape, that can’t escapehim—John’s learned it doesn’t matter what he thinks, what he hopes, no: facts matter. Evidence matters. What it all adds up to in the end is what matters, and what it all adds up to is this:John Watson is not the man he wants to be.Spoilers for 4.02—The Lying Detective





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scullyseviltwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyseviltwin/gifts).



> Unbeta'd, totally spur of the moment before I couldn't sleep. For [scullyseviltwin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyseviltwin), who probably didn't want anything like this for her Winter Gift-Fic, but... I hope it's not too horrid <3

Of all the many things John Watson’s thought sitting here, in this chair, he’s not surprised by this one:

He hasn’t lived in this flat for ages, now, and yet it’s the only place he thinks has ever felt like home.

That’s his luck, though, isn’t it? That’s his goddamn lot in life.

There’s cake, below, waiting. Ice cream, probably, downstairs; round the block. Birthdays.

John doesn’t even know how old Sherlock is, not exactly. He can guess, he can deduce, but fucking hell: he doesn’t know.

John’s had plenty of opportunities, hell: he’s had opportunities today, just now. He maybe even thought he was taking advantage of one of those opportunities. But John's learned enough from this chair, in this home that he can’t escape, that can’t escape _him_ —John’s learned it doesn’t matter what he thinks, what he hopes, no: facts matter. Evidence matters. What it all adds up to in the end is what matters, and what it all adds up to is this: 

John Watson is not the man he wants to be.

_Get the hell on with it_

And John hasn’t been since he set foot back into this flat today, either. Nonsense spurting at the hint of a moan, Jesus Christ—chances, so many fucking chances, and who was he talking to? Who was he saying it to, Sherlock? The Woman? Mary?

Facts _matter_.

“Sherlock?”

Cake is waiting; ice cream. Birthdays.

Facts.

Sherlock’s popping his collar as he turns, something forgotten: evidence.

He pausing, mid-motion, and turns—abandons whatever he forgot.

Not his mobile. Not his moaning mobile: fact. _Fact_.

But something else: something else, to focus again upon John.

Evidence?

John shakes his head. Sherlock frowns; expectant, reading him and not liking whatever he sees. John doesn’t like what he sees, either. 

_Get the hell on with it_.

John swallows hard; squares his shoulders: breathes.

Right.

“Why?”

Sherlock squints at him. “Excuse me?”

“Why?” John nods to the mobile. “You said sometimes, but it’s just texting.” He shrugs. “Doesn’t _mean_ anything, that’s what you said, yeah?”

“It’s _text_ , John, it’s pixels on a screen, they’re rudimentary at best.” Sherlock’s eyes start to roll before he halts himself, but John notices: notices what he’s failed to for far too long—Sherlock’s changed.

Sherlock isn’t primarily a mind, after all, is he? He’s feeling, emotions: a heart, more than he’s anything else.

Maybe Sherlock didn’t change, no. Maybe John did. Got better at seeing, got worse at caring, got more selfish than what he thought was most selfish: his life given a worth he tossed like rubbish, spat in the face of.

John is not the man he wants to be.

But John’s starting to feel the reverberations, now; now that Mary’s not whispering over his shoulder, now that he can’t see her like a totem, a lucky charm in his pocket for keeps—he’s beginning to feel the twist in his chest and the freefall in his gut from the back of that ambulance, from Molly’s desperate, hopeless warnings and Sherlock’s disregard—

_Your life doesn’t belong to you._

John shakes his head; he doesn’t know where that came from, but he sees the point.

His life ended most recently in the hall of a hospital, steps from a jammed door, thin enough to hear the whine of a flatline.

He knows—maybe he’s always known—who is life belongs to.

Fuck _all_. How did he miss that? How did he _not_ miss that, but fucking _ignore_ that so goddamn well?

_Never mind how._

John stares at the phone just a little bit longer, like it has answers.

_I want to know why._

And John, John had listened to a recording that was more than a moan. Recordings have voices, voices having meaning, aren’t pixels on screens: _I want you to kill me_.

But his life doesn’t belong to him; Sherlock’s death isn’t his own.

_I don’t want to die._

John’s slept only a handful of hours in the nights, since. Over and again, it haunts him:

 _I have reasons_.

“Why just texting? Why not,” John gestures idly; “Why _not_ High Wycombe?”

Sherlock stills, for a moment, and it’s terrifying, as it always is: that momentum, that frantic energy stilled—breathtaking.

And fucking _terrifying_.

“John—”

“Why, Sherlock?” John steps forward, unconsciously; rightly. It feels right.

Like something the John Watson he wants to be. Could be.

Maybe.

And maybe the mobile on the table was left for a reason. A plan. Help he won’t accept, but can’t refuse, and maybe those are opposites, maybe they cancel each other out entirely and leave only the base, the important bit, the common denominator:

_The man we both…_

“You’re not that thick, John,” Sherlock says, without any heat. With a certain edge of defeat, really, that makes John want to come apart at his already worn seams. “You _know_ why.”

 _Love_.

_The man we both love._

And so John steps forward, and he means to this time. John steps forward once, and twice, and he thinks maybe the phone goes off—maybe his, maybe Sherlock’s but the intake of breath could be Sherlock; the moan could be in John’s head: a want he’d never admit to, can’t.

Could, maybe. Someday. Some version of himself to come.

So: another step—three—but he doesn’t stop, he does not _stop_ after three and then he’s close enough that Sherlock’s too-thin chest pushes against him with ragged breath; close enough that he could count the hairs in Sherlock’s stubble. 

And there’s a hateful, heart-filled part of John that wants to say _the value you don’t know how to spend, spend it on me, goddamn you, goddamnit, don’t be a cliche, don’t love her, don’t keep her, don’t want_ her, if you need completing and you don’t, fuck off with my bullshit you don’t, but complete it with me, with me you arsehole, but John is not the man he wants to be. The man he wants to be would say nothing, would do nothing.

The man he wants to be wouldn’t be feeling Sherlock’s breath on his cheek just not, _wanting_ , and sometimes, apparently, from time to time, we’re all a little bit human, so: baby steps.

Slow and steady and—

Sherlock is the one who closes the distance, leans against all odds from the east and fuck all, fuck _everything_.

Sherlock tastes of sugar before they touch a slice of cake, and his lips are dry and he’s unsteady still, but his mouth is shaped perfectly, and of all the many things John Watson’s thought standing here, in this flat, this one he never thought he’d get an answer to—the way Sherlock Holmes feels against his tongue.

And in the end: what it all adds up to is what matters.

And what it all adds up to is _this_.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
